"The most important thing that I can do is not fill the heads of undergraduates with facts but give them tools to analyze the world," Frieden said.
When Frieden was a visiting professor at Harvard, he made valuable contributions not only to his students,' but to his colleagues' work, Putnam said.
"I know he came here expecting to get a lot of his own writing done, but he didn't get as much as he expected to because he ended up reading a lot of other papers by people here," Putnam said. "Our work was certainly the better for it."
Frieden received his bachelor's degree in 1979 and a Ph.D from Columbia University. He has been teaching at UCLA since 1983.
His books include Banking on the World and Debt, Development and Democracy.
A New York native, Frieden said he is happy to be returning to this part of the country.
"I have a personal geographical preference for the urban Northeast," he said